The Jut Set
June 17th 2008

I goofed last time by saying that Seafield Bogie was running at Worcester on June 7th .  He was a bit stiff and so our trainer, Tom George, decided to send him to the Equine Spa instead of the Worcester Races.  All the same, we had a lovely Ladies’ Day at Worcester, what a lovely course it is and a lot of money was raised for St Richard’s Hospice, so everything was very successful.

The highlight of the day, however, was the Valerie Lewis Handicap Chase, which was in memory of Jim Lewis’s wonderful wife.  And in a way, in memory of Best Mate, the horse that Valerie and Jim owned and loved so much, who died very soon before Valerie.  Jim was running a new, young, brilliant horse in the race called Oumeyade, who is trained by Paul Nicholls and was ridden by Tony McCoy, who was Valerie’s favourite jockey and who evidently asked if he could come down to Worcester to ride the horse.

Many of Jim Lewis’s family were there, including two gorgeous little granddaughters and by some utter, joyful miracle Oumeyade won absolutely beautifully by three-and-three-quarter-lengths.  Everybody was in floods of tears, we were so pleased and moved.  Oumeyade got almost patted to death afterwards by his family and admirers.  It was wonderful and there is no getting away from the fact that Paul Nicholls is an absolutely brilliant trainer and Tony McCoy is riding better and better.

Here is a picture of me and Jim Lewis before the race, taken by Emma Attwood of the Worcester News.  I am wearing a wonderful white suit designed by my friend Mariska Kay, who has now launched her own label, Mariska.  Her clothes are absolutely gorgeous and I wear them at every opportunity.

I am not going to Ascot this week, but I thought you might be amused to read a piece I wrote for the Sunday Times back in 1981, which shows that nothing has really changed:

THE JUT SET
Nothing illustrates my basic insecurity more than the flap I got into this week before my first trip to Ascot.  I wasn’t even going in the Royal Enclosure, but my sartorial advisers insisted I must get out of trousers and boots and into a dress, hat and shoes.  This meant – horrors – that my legs would have to come out of the closet for the first time in years.
           
To say that I have table legs would be grossly unfair to a lot of tables.  They look passable first thing in the morning, and not bad if I wear lowish heels all day.  But half an hour in a heatwave, high heels and tights, and they swell up like duffle bags.
           
After a baking weekend, I gloomily selected my tropical kit: a straw hat with a blue ribbon, a peacock-blue dress, with my legs coming only half out of the closet in cowboy boots. Alas, my husband crashed the dress rehearsal, saying the cowboy boots were hell and the dress should go to jumble immediately. After much burrowing I unearthed a white flimsy dress, which he agreed was more suitable.
           
Monday was spent gathering accessories: several necklaces, three scarves to know pirate fashion round my waist, the first bra I’d bought in ten years (that was a shock – I’d swelled from 36B to a massive 80B cup), a pair of black sling-backs, and some moccasins, unaccountably called ‘Socrates’.  I thought I had prepared for every eventuality.
           
Ascot day dawned below zero, with force-ten gales and not enough blue sky outside even to make a pair of Prince Andrew’s trousers.  Not only would I freeze in my white dress, but, putting it on in daylight, I discovered two vast white pockets hanging down towards my groin like obscene kidneys.  At this rate, I sobbed, I would reach Ascot wearing only my straw hat, like an Italian donkey.  The sole alternative was an ancient black-belted tent.  Topped by my hat, I looked like a wedding above the neck, and a fat funeral below.  A scratched midge bite on my ankle wept through my tights in sympathy.
           
Adrian George, who was coming along to illustrate the piece, had also never been to Ascot.  Getting kitted up he hadn’t fared much better.  His car had been towed away after four hours’ queuing at Moss Bros, and they had persuaded him into a grey top hat not big enough to trap a rat.  He kept tucking his morning coat into his trousers thinking it was shirt-tails.  Irritatingly, both he and my husband looked infinitely more glamorous than me.
           
Happily we’d been invited to lunch in a box on the top tier, where the view of the Ascot Course unrolls like those double-page spreads in a Barbar book.  Below, coloured hats and grey toppers swarmed around the bookies – a psychedelic mushroom farm.  The band played Gilbert and Sullivan.  Helicopters like great birds landed in a distant field laying precious cargoes of jockeys.  To the left, heels sinking into the Royal Enclosure grass indicated the sawftness of the going.  In the distance fluffy green woods had been washed and fabric-conditioned by weeks of rain.
           
And if I looked frightful, a lot of people looked almost as bed.  The Jut Set – well endowed girls in very low-cut dresses – were out in force.  Others, determined to wear their flimsiest dresses, topped them with short fur coats, looking rather like our senior cat when he had a nervous breakdown and went bald below the waist.
           

Lady Diana’s influence was paramount.  Girl after girl sported the short white off-the-shoulder replica of the famous black taffeta she wore to the Lord Mayor’s Dinner.  Gooseflesh turning purple beneath four layers of Man Tan, they displayed bright orange elbows, each time they clutched their hats in the icy wind.  Not that I was faring much better – my hat elastic snapped at the first gust.
           
After a glass or two of champagne, however, I began t cheer up.  Even gulls’ eggs were worn off-the-shoulder this year – a thoughtful waitress had peeled the shell off the tops.  Gradually other guests appeared in the box.  I was slightly startled when a suave gentleman produced a pair of tights out of his handbag.  ‘They’re mine,’ explained the woman he came with.  ‘One must take spare tights to Ascot, in case they get laddered by umbrellas.’
           
Next to arrive was a wonderful blonde in a dashing shocking-pink hat.           
‘My hats have much more fun in life than I do,’ she sighed.  ‘This one’s coming every day this week on different girlfriends.’          
‘Rather like jockeys,’ said my husband looking visibly impressed.
           
As the time for the Queen’s arrival approached, the tension mounted.  Policemen faced outwards, as crowds thickly lined the rails.  Welcome light relief was provided by a huge yellow penguin, a pink kangaroo, and a blue rabbit, which were perched on a rail among the jellied eel stalls across the track.
           
‘They’re security guards,’ said a fat woman in an adjacent box knowledgeably.  ‘Well perhaps they’re not,’ she went on, as the rabbit’s head fell off.
           
The loveliest sight in England must be the Queen and her convoy of carriages coming like an arrow up the emerald-green track, past the cheap stands and the captains of industry in their boxes, past the Royal Enclosure, and turning left through an avenue of raised toppers and pretty bobbing ladies to that heart of the establishment, the Royal Box.  Nowhere is the Queen more popular than on the race track (and never more so than after her display of pluck and sang-froid when someone fired blanks at her at the Trooping of the Colour).  Not since I saw Domingo take a curtain call at Covent Garden, have I heard the cheers and bravos ring out more tumultuously.
           
The Queen was followed by a foxglove-pink blob that was Princess Margaret, and a Parma-violet blob, which someone said was Lady Diana.  No one however could miss Princess Michael, her ebullient wave rotating on all sides like a windmill.
           
One of life’s minor humiliations is having to move other people’s binoculars inwards because one’s eyes are closer set.  Minor, however, compared with the humiliations of the poor man in the next-door-box, who was close to tears because he’d provided a lavish lunch for twenty, and no one had showed up.
            
Whatever has been said about the riff-raff of parvenus and ex-jailbirds who have recently infiltrated the Royal Enclosure, I thought the people in there looked splendid.  From our box, you could see that the colours of the women’s dresses were far more sharp and vibrant than those in the public stands: brilliant reds and fuchsias, gentian blues and dusty pinks, all set off by the black and grey of the morning coats and top hats.  The women’s skirts were worn as they have been for the last twenty years, bang on the knee.  Only here too were hats staying on without being held.  Are the women’s heads so hard from falling off ponies in their youth, that they don’t feel the hat pins?
           
The men looked equally glamorous.  It being the first day, their morning coats hadn’t had time to get creased.  Most had the sort of lean figures where you couldn’t tell if they’d been to Moss Bros until they lifted their race glasses.  One is reminded of Wilfred Hyde-White’s exquisite pre-war comment on Hitler: ‘If the fellow’s going to raise his arm so much, he really ought to go to a decent tailor.’
           
In answer to everyone’s question – Lady Diana is infinitely more gorgeous in the flesh.  I didn’t get near her at Ascot, but at a garden party a few weeks ago, she was only a couple of feet away.  Above all you remember the dazzlingly direct speedwell-blue gaze – like Polly in Love in a Cold Climate.  But there is also a combination of sweetness, shyness and peachy voluptuousness reminiscent of the youthful Lillie Langtry.
           
Her impact on fashion has been so dramatic and widespread, she might even persuade upper-class women at last to abandon their bare foreheads and Alice-banded hair for the far more flattering fringe which shades yet emphasizes the eyes like a big-brimmed hat.
           
Over in the paddock, only the keys shed by the lime tree marred the striped perfection of the grass.  Out came the jockeys in their rainbow silks.
           
‘Aren’t they pretty?’ said a girl in rose courtelle.
‘Bit small,’ said her friend.  ‘I like a man to be tall.’
‘I’m going to back that one,’ said a braless blonde in ketchup red, ‘because of his lovely long legs.’
‘Sure you’re talking about the horses?’ asked her boyfriend acidly.
Walking across the grass, one constantly avoided being run down by people bucketing past in wheelchairs, presumably recovering from riding and skiing accidents.  One very old man, however, was careering after his ancient wife like Steve McQueen in Bullitt.  ‘Poor thing’s lorst her memory,’ he bellowed, reversing sharply into an acquaintance.  ‘Keeps thinkin’ she’s married to someone else.’

Everywhere people were saying how well Mrs Thatcher was doing.
‘Except for unemployment – poor dear,’ said a horse-faced woman.
‘I’m sure if they changed the word Dole to Arts Council Grant,’ drawled a young exquisite, ‘no one would feel it a bit infra dig to be out of work.’

One could imagine a lefty at Ascot hacking his way through such a dense jungle of conservatism and falling on another lefty’s neck, thankfully crying: ‘Kenneth Livingstone, I presume.’

Later I passed three amazing girls, one with a stuffed telephone on her head, another with a stuffed ice-cream cornet, and a third with a stuffed iron with a flex wound round and round, and a three-point plug hanging down the back like a Davy Crockett tail.
           
Back at our box, the man who’d been in tears next door had cheered up noticeably because his friends – chiefly top brass from the clearing banks – had finally turned up.  My husband viewed them in horror: ‘I’d have cried much harder when they arrived,’ he said.  Adrian George was in transports, having won £90 on the last race.  At least it’d pay for his car being towed away.
           
Perhaps the nicest part of the day was that instead of bolting home after the last race, people all hung over the backs of their boxes, and watched the crowds gathering round the bandstands and dancing to the music.  A frantic Charleston with morning coat tails flying was followed by a decorous waltz, then by a sing-song.  No one could accuse the English of coldness, as in an orgy of patriotism, tears streaking the women’s mascara, they belted out ‘There’ll Always be an England’.
           
‘Rule Britannia’ next, and the fact that a woman in a wheelchair as high as a kite was conducting the crowd in a completely different tempo to the bandmaster, only added to the general jollity.  In the tiers below all you could see were waving Union Jacks and coloured hats like window boxes of sweet peas.  ‘Jerusalem’, then ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, ‘Roll out the Barrel’ (double presumably), and then the National Anthem.  There must have been a lump in every throat, as we roared out:
           
Send her Victorious
Happy and Glorious
Long to reign over us
- and really meant it.
           
On reflection, it seems a pity there’s so much hysteria about the lobster-and-champagne aspect of Ascot, when you merely have people of all classes enjoying a vintage day out.  Most of them only come on one day, and have probably saved up for the treat all year.  And at least my legs enjoyed their first day of freedom.
The Sunday Times 1981